Legend of Grimrock - Release Plans, Interview

Hey all!
We’ve had a lot of steady progress in making the game itself and in the meanwhile the release plans have also started to solidify. And like always, we want to keep you guys up to date on these things. Although do keep in mind that just like before we don’t want to label these plans as promises quite yet since a lot of things might happen in the next few months still so regard these as our goals instead of absolute truths. All right, now since we got that disclaimer out of the way let’s talk about the plan itself!

We are currently developing the game on PC-computers like pretty much any developer primarily does regardless of for what platform they are doing the product. And since our company is pretty micro-sized and we’re progressing at break-neck speeds (just the way we like it) we don’t have much bandwidth at the moment for porting the game to support multiple platforms at once. So what we intend to do is get the Windows version of the game shipped first on a 3rd party digital distribution channel and then move on to Mac and iOS platforms (and possibly some others at a later date). We’ve already done some work on iOS/Mac platforms, partly utilizing some freelance programming work, but for now getting to the finish line with these two platforms will have to wait to sometime early next year. We probably could squeeze in more platforms for the initial launch if we wanted to but that would be pretty risky since we’d have less time for polishing the game and we would have to utilize freelancers more which would eat our funds, and therefore our margin of error, quicker. So in a lot of ways this plan is primarily about eliminating risks and going through the path of least resistance and keeping things simple. All of which should result in a better, more polished game for you to play.
So, just to recap:
1. Our goal is to get the game done during this year.
2. We release on PC first, followed by iOS and Mac.
3. The game will kick ass!

Will dungeons be generated randomly or will they be hand made? In the latter case, will Legend of Grimrock be playable many times?
The dungeons will be hand made. Big part of Legend of Grimrock is puzzle solving that randomly generated maps would have constrained too much. With hand made levels we have an opportunity to make a level into one big puzzle if we wanted to. The puzzle solving element is something we feel is very lacking, and in some cases completely absent, in modern RPGs.
Legend of Grimrock will have replay value. There are numerous combinations with your party members that change the way you play the game. There are also secrets in the dungeons that player may not find in the first play-through.

PC and Mac versions should be pretty similar, but as I said above we haven’t properly started working with portable version so we can’t say for sure what things we have to change. Obviously we’re keeping portable versions limitations in mind when designing the game on PC, so that the experience would be close match in each platform.